On a certain Saturday, for instance, the eminent ex-financier, having lost his head after the manner of some born gamblers, had, at the Casino, played the wrong number--a series of wrong numbers, in fact--an error which resulted in his pushing a crisp bundle of Bank of England notes--almost all he had with him--toward the spidery hands of a suave gentleman with rat eyes and bloodless face, who gathered them up with a furtive, deadly smile.
The gold Letters might have been omitted here, and, in their stead, my lady could have made a common pinhole to remind her, if she ever cared to remember, that it was on that very night that her passionately enamoured lover had helped her unfasten from her throat a string of pearls which O'Day had given her, and which, strange to say, for a woman so injured, so maligned, and so misunderstood, she, with Dalton's advice, had carried off when she deserted both her husband and her husband's bed and board.

And she might have inserted just below the pinhole the illuminating note that, after unfastening the string, Dalton had forgotten to return it.
And then there had come an August morning--the following Monday, to be exact--when, his coffee untasted, he had sat staring at a paragraph in the financial column of a London paper, not daring to lay it down for fear she would pick it up.

It gave a full and detailed account of the discovery of a series of certificates bearing duplicate numbers, said duplicates claiming to be the genuine shares of the Bawhadder Rubber Co., Ltd.

It also hinted at a searching investigation about to be made by a financial committee of the highest standing at its next regular meeting, but a few days off.

More important still was a crisp editorial, charging the directors of the aforesaid company, and particularly its promoter--name withheld--with irregularities of the gravest import.
And it was on this same Monday morning--another pinhole, made with a big black pin would serve best here--before the stone-cold coffee and the dry, uneaten toast had been sent away, that there had arrived a most important telegram (that is, Dalton had SAID it had arrived) ordering him back to London on business of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE.